


What the Soul Remembers

by Leahelisabeth (fortheloveofcamelot)



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Amnesia, Angst, Concussions, Homophobia, Hopeful Ending, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-13
Updated: 2020-08-13
Packaged: 2021-03-06 01:15:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,773
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25724953
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fortheloveofcamelot/pseuds/Leahelisabeth
Summary: “Lord, they musta been tired if they left me with a complete stranger,” Dicky joked, trying to relieve a tension he couldn’t understand.“Bits,” the man gasped.  “Don’t you...what’s the last thing you remember?”Eric Bittle wakes up in the hospital after that one disastrous play and he's forgotten everything from his freshman year: his friends, the good times, and his soulmate.
Relationships: Eric "Bitty" Bittle/Jack Zimmermann
Comments: 19
Kudos: 297
Collections: Check Please Heartbreak Fest 2020





	What the Soul Remembers

**Author's Note:**

  * For [onawingandaswear](https://archiveofourown.org/users/onawingandaswear/gifts).



Dicky’s head was full of cotton wool and he struggled to open his eyes. The light was bright and he only managed to open them a slit before it felt like he was being stabbed in the brain and he slammed them closed again.

“Oh my god, honey, are you wakin’ up? Richard, I think he’s tryin’ t’open his eyes,” his mama’s voice filtered through the agony, dragging him closer to full consciousness. He heard the sound of a curtain being pulled and a shadow fell across his face and he attempted to open his eyes once more.

“Mama?” he asked, voice rasping in his dry throat.

“Sweetheart, let me get you an ice chip.” His mama’s presence withdrew and she was back an instant later, pressing something cold and wet against his lips. It felt heavenly in his dry throat.

“Mama, what?...” he asked, shifting his head on the pillow. He whined as the movement made his head throb.

“I knew we should have never let you go so far away for school,” Mama scolded lightly, fluttering around his bed so quickly he could hardly keep track of her movements.

Dicky furrowed his brow, trying to figure out what she was talking about. He hadn’t left yet. The truck was packed and waiting, ready to drive him and his things down to Samwell for his first semester. Had they gotten into an accident on the way?

“Sorry, Mama,” he whispered.

“Hush, it’s not your fault,” she said softly, laying her cool hand on his sweaty, aching forehead. “Don’t go gettin’ all worked up. I’ll fetch the doctor.”

“Okay,” Dicky sighed, and stopped forcing himself to stay awake.

When he opened his eyes again, his mama and Coach were gone. The curtain was still strung around his bed, keeping the area in a twilight softness that felt timeless. A man sat at his bedside, exhaustion written in every line on his noticeably handsome face. His eyes were closed and he was slumped over, hair uncombed and a little greasy. He was holding Dicky’s hand, thumb pressed to the delicate skin on the inside of his wrist in a hold that was intimate and possessive and far too familiar considering Dicky had never seen the man before in his life.

Dicky pulled away, trying to extricate his hand without disturbing the man. He couldn’t imagine what he was doing in Dicky’s room anyway. Where was Mama? Where was Coach? Why had they left him with a stranger?

He was almost free when the man let out a gasp and shot upright, mesmerizing blue eyes opening and locking onto Dicky’s face. “Bud—” The man’s face went on a journey through surprise, concern, worry, relief, and incandescent joy. “—You’re awake!”

Dicky jerked away, wincing as his head throbbed. “Where’s Mama?” he asked in a small voice.

The man’s face shifted back into worry. “She and your father are getting a good night’s sleep. They haven’t really left the hospital since you were hurt.” He reached out to gently stroke Dicky’s cheek.

For one weird moment, Dicky was tempted to lean into the stranger’s hand, but good sense won out and he pulled away.

A flicker of hurt crossed the man’s face but he didn’t reach out again.

“Lord, they musta been tired if they left me with a complete stranger,” Dicky joked, trying to relieve a tension he couldn’t understand.

“Bits,” the man gasped. “Don’t you...what’s the last thing you remember?”

Dicky closed his eyes, trying to think around the pounding in his head. Memory was a slippery thing; the more he reached out, the more it wriggled away and disappeared from view. He thought he could recall the cold air of a rink and the crisp sound of skate blades, tan and blue and bright, bright red, the feeling of flight and a wall of fear so tangible he could taste it.

His brain shut that down and found something safer. “We were packing the truck? And Mama was bakin’ a pie for the road. I’m headin’ to college tomorrow.”

Horror crossed the man’s face for just a moment. Dicky could see the effort it took for him to reign it back in and force himself to smile.

“Did I say somethin’ wrong?” Dicky asked. Tears began building up behind his eyes and he couldn’t figure out why.

The man cleared his throat and stood. He wobbled a little when he got to his feet but smiled reassuringly at Dicky. “No, you didn’t do anything wrong. I think I’m going to go grab the doctor though.”

Things got busy then. A seemingly endless parade of doctors and nurses came through, asking him questions he should know the answer to, shining bright lights in his eyes, consulting worriedly with each other in the corner, and no one would tell him why. Mama bustled in soon after, looking exhausted and wrecked, not even bothering to try to hide her tears. Coach stood silently, hand on her shoulder, a minute furrow in his brow.

Eventually, the story came out. Dicky was not about to leave for college; he had already gone. His first year was nearly over and he had forgotten the entire thing.

The next few days passed in a daze. He slept far more often than he was awake. He endured test after test but most came back inconclusive. Only time would tell if his memory would return. For now, that entire year and the friends he had made were lost to him.

He had a few visitors, two broad-shouldered men who spoke at a volume that hurt his ears and an energetic man in a mustache who apparently had no concept of personal space. They called him Bitty and loved on him loudly and they were complete strangers to him. The blue-eyed man came back too. He was quieter and watched Dicky with sadness in his eyes when he thought Dicky wasn’t looking.

“That’s Jack Zimmermann, the captain of the hockey team,” Mama explained when he asked. “He looks so sad because he was supposed to have your back on the ice and he let you get hurt.”

Dicky wanted to ask him about it but Mama never left him alone with Jack. She would leave the room for a cup of coffee when Ransom, Holster, or Shitty stopped by, but the moment Jack came to visit, she would put on her mama bear face and glare him down.

Dicky was almost glad when the doctors decided he could travel and his mama told him they were driving back to Georgia. He hated seeing disappointment on his teammates’ faces when they would bring up an inside joke or mention something they had done together or, heck, even talk about a pie Dicky didn’t remember baking.

They planned to take it slow. The sixteen-hour drive was going to be broken up into at least four days to give Dicky plenty of time to recover from the travel before he had to get on the road again. He spent most of it drifting in and out of sleep and wishing he could look at his phone. His twitter was full of an entire freshman year’s worth of memories and he had so many questions. He also assumed he hadn’t stopped vlogging while he was at Samwell and that would be another valuable source for discovering his missing year.

But even glancing at the screen gave him an eye-watering headache and he couldn’t push through it no matter how much he wanted to regain what he had lost. All he knew was that he had an impressive amount of notifications and that he didn’t want his mama to read them out to him in case she discovered something she wasn’t allowed to know. He didn’t even manage to unlock it before she bustled over and confiscated it, putting it in her purse for later when he started feeling better.

His first night on the road was uneventful. His sleep was deep and dreamless. The second was different. He woke up, half hard in his shorts, a hazy memory of blue eyes rapidly dissolving into mist in his mind’s eye, and he was desperately thirsty.

His parents were talking quietly, propped up in the other bed and he was about to interrupt them to ask for a glass of water when he heard his name.

“Are we sure we’re doin’ the right thing for Dicky?” his mama asked softly. “What do we tell him when he never finds his soulmate? We’re dooming him to a life of loneliness.”

“We discussed this,” Coach said firmly, keeping his voice low. “It’s just better this way. He was going to choose that...soulmate of his and risk an eternity in hell. At least now we have the opportunity to make the right choice for him.”

Every fibre of Dicky’s being froze in shock. He had met his soulmate at Samwell. He had already had that one moment of recognition and lost it. He could almost reconcile losing a year of his life. If his friends were truly his friends, he could build those relationships again. He could make new memories. But he would never get another Soulmate Moment.

He was grateful then that he was facing away from his parents as tears began to soak his pillow. He cried himself to sleep.

He hadn’t been talking much already but as the trip continued, Dicky found himself falling deeper into silence. His mama watched him in the rear view mirror with worried eyes. Part of him wanted to smile and alleviate her concern but the rest of him wanted to scream at her for making such an important decision about his future and leaving him completely out of it. He stole his phone back out of his mama’s purse while she was in the washroom but they didn’t leave him alone long enough for him to find answers to all his burning questions.

The closer they got to Georgia, the more Dicky became aware of an emptiness, a loneliness, a void at his side where someone belonged, even if he didn’t know who.

When they finally reached Madison on their fourth day of travel, Dicky was all too ready to retreat to his room and never come out again. The last few nights of his trip had been plagued with dreams, all of them dissipating in the light of day and feeding the yawning pit in his center.

His room was the same and different from how he remembered it. A spare set of sheets made up the bed. Most of his clothing was still in boxes, waiting to be unpacked. His medals and trophies and pictures were all in slightly different places after being dusted dozens of times and put back just a tiny bit wrong. It smelled like laundry and stale air, like nobody had lived there for months, months he’d spent somewhere else in love with a soulmate he’s forgotten.

He plugged his phone in, wincing as it immediately flashed with more notifications as it powered up. Mama was calling him for dinner and he went, knowing he needed a meal and a painkiller and a nap before he attempted to look through his lost memories.

He didn’t taste his supper at all, too antsy to get back to his phone and the secrets it carried.

“Oh Dicky, did you take your phone back?” Mama asked as he prepared to get up from the table. “I couldn’t find it in my purse and you really shouldn’t be using it yet.”

“No,” Dicky lied. “My head still hurts too much. Maybe it fell out in the car.”

“Hmm,” Mama said. “Can you give me your passcode? I was thinking it might be nice if I could look through it. I can switch the apps to night mode and pass on any messages from your little friends.”

Dicky was instantly suspicious. He shrugged. “I must have changed it after I went to Samwell. I couldn’t get in.”

His mama relaxed, confirming his suspicions. “Oh, what a shame,” she said. “I’m sure we’ll figure it out. Would you like a slice of pie?”

Dicky shook his head carefully. “I just want to sleep.”

He locked the bedroom door and unplugged his phone, wincing when it flashed in his face. He fidgeted with the screen settings for a while, trying to find a setting bright enough to read without squinting and dim enough that he could stand to look at it.

Now that it was in his hands, he didn’t know where to start. His lockscreen said Samwell on a red and white background. His home screen was a little more promising, two clasped hands, one of which was his own. The other was large and square with long fingers and it held Dicky’s hand like it was something precious. It was enough to tell Dicky that this was real, but he was no closer to figuring out the identity of his soulmate.

He immediately dismissed his Twitter feed and the comments on his YouTube videos. If there was any information to be found, it would be buried deep. He scrolled through his text conversations, seeing messages from Shitty, Ransom, and Holster, and a few others whose names he didn’t recognize, all telling him to get well soon.

Dicky’s heart fluttered when he noticed a conversation with someone named _Sweetpea_. He opened it and began to scroll through, heart aching at the picture that began to take shape. Dicky’s soulmate had a quick wit and a dry sense of humor. He chirped him constantly about inability to take a check and his disastrous command of the French language. He also had a habit of saying ridiculous, sincere, heartstopping things when Dicky’s guard was down. Dicky wondered how he could miss someone he didn’t even know.

He could feel his tolerance for screen time coming to an end. Lights started flashing before his eyes and a pulsing pressure began building behind his right temple. His plan had been to scroll through the photos next but he knew he couldn’t, not without a good night’s sleep. But he couldn’t wait. He hesitated only an instant before moving his thumb up to the corner of the conversation and pressing call.

It rang only twice before a voice answered. “Bits?” the man gasped, as if he had run to answer.

“Sweetpea?” Dicky asked.

“You remember?” Sweetpea whispered. Dicky felt guilty when he heard the relief in the man’s tone.

“No,” Dicky said. “But I want to.”

“Oh,” Sweetpea replied. “You can ask me anything you want.” He sounded oddly formal.

“Good,” Dicky said. “That’s really good.”

Silence stretched long between them. Dicky expected it to feel awkward but it actually felt comfortable, like he’d done this before.

“How are you feeling?” Sweetpea finally asked. “Was the trip okay?”

“It was long. I still have a headache but it’s getting better,” Dicky said.

“You probably shouldn’t be on your phone,” Sweetpea chided him.

Tears flooded Dicky’s eyes. “They weren’t even going to tell me,” he choked out. “They were going to pretend you didn’t even exist. I think if I hadn’t gotten to my phone first, Mama might have blocked your number and tried to delete every trace of you.”

“You told them about me two weeks before you were hurt. They weren’t happy,” Sweetpea confirmed with a heavy sigh. “But I wouldn’t have let them keep us apart forever. I love you.”

Dicky cried at that, weeping until his head hurt and his nose was stuffed up and his eyes were all puffy and swollen. Sweetpea stayed on the line, ever so often saying, “I’m here.”

“I should go,” Dicky said regretfully when all his tears had run dry.

“You should rest,” Sweetpea agreed. “You need to prioritize your recovery so you can get back on the ice.”

Dicky laughed. “You sound like you’re in an interview.”

“You know me, the hockey robot,” Sweetpea teased before cutting himself off in an awkward silence, remembering that Dicky didn’t know him anymore.

“What’s your name?” Dicky blurted out. “You’re just Sweetpea in my phone.”

“Oh,” Sweetpea paused. “Jack. I’m Jack.”

“Jack,”’ Dicky echoed. He remembered Jack, his tired looking captain with the sad blue eyes. He didn’t remember what it felt like to have that moment of recognition when they first met, but he had something like it now, softer, gentler, like something he’d always known and only just now remembered. “It might take some time but I’ll come back to you.”

“It’s okay, Bitty,” Jack whispered. “I’ll wait.”


End file.
